Just like Christmas, E3 comes but once a year. However, unlike Christmas, E3 isn’t filled with sentiment and family values. For you, the person who isn’t an industry professional and is but a lowly internet blogger, you haven’t been invited, but instead paid for a ticket to confirm your attendance. You’d do well to remember that. So, you will arrive, you will sample the delights on offer from the greatest industry in the world, you will wait in line and then you will leave with nothing but fond memories. Got that? Good. Now that’s out of the way, here’s a spoiler-filled itinerary for this year’s conference.
Welcome to E3 2012!
June 5th / Midday / Convention Centre Main Hall
Are you all settled in? Have you had a chance to link your laptop to the Wi-Fi in the room of your hideously overbooked hotel room and tell all 13 followers of your blog what a ‘cool’ and ‘leet’ experience this is for you? Good, good. And now that you’ve eaten your dietary-specific breakfast of two bags of Doritos and a can of Pepsi Max, we will educate you on the dos and don’ts of E3 2012, and give you a glimpse of what to expect at this year’s event. So pick up your ears, and leave your badge-covered backpack at the door. Welcome to E3 2012.
GAME REVEAL! – SHINY DISNEY FUN ADVENTURE SPARKLE – Xbox 360 Kinect
June 5th / 2PM / Stage A
Join a ridiculously overweight Disney spokesman announcing a ‘revolutionary’ game for the kids which combines the fun, yet eerily suggestive themes of Disney, with the Volvo Estate motion sensor technology harnessed by an Xbox Kinect device. You’ll laugh, cry and blog, all the while knowing that you will buy the game regardless of being so far away from the target audience that your inner child quakes in its shackles. How old are you anyway? Thirty?
Shameless PR Stunt – SEGA
June 5th / 3PM / Stage A, after all of the Disney twats have cleared out
SEGA representatives wearing face-mounted microphones jump around on stage whilst wearing matching blue and yellow blazers and throwing plush toys into the crowd. ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ is played in the background as the energetic PR representatives curse their luck for drawing the short straw back at SEGA HQ, and try to remind us that SEGA make other games besides ones featuring Sonic the Hedgehog.
GAME REVEAL! – Sonic the Hedgehog: At the London 2012 Olympic Games – All Formats
June 5th / 3:30PM / spontaneously erupting from Stage A
Hey! What do you know! A new Sonic game! How surprising. Anyway, the game is basically Sonic going to the Olympics to pole vault and play football or some shit, before being involved in a Brixton gang-shooting and dying from his wounds on the way to a local medical facility. DLC will be released where Sonic doesn’t die for those of you who have grown too attached to a cartoon hedgehog. Similarly, this DLC will also be a prequel for next year’s surprise reveal of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog: Does Macbeth’.
SONY Keynote
June 5th / 5PM / Stage C
Join a rag-tag bunch of SONY’s finest English-speaking representatives convincing those present that the PS Vita ‘may just be worth it’. It isn’t, but you will buy it anyway. Following this, SONY announces that Grand Turismo 6 is in production with a view to being released in summer 2017.
Show floor Demos
June 5th / 7PM til late / Show floor
Finish the day by indulging in many of the demos and other previews we have lying around. Sample such delights as the recently announced Gears of War title ‘Project R.O.L.L.S.H.O.OT.’ and even EA’s brand new ‘Ultimate Deluxe Content Pass’ which will allow online access and server queue-jump priority in all EA games released in the next 6 months for a one-off payment of £109.99. Aren’t you lucky?
Microsoft Keynote
June 6th / Midday / Stage A
The juggernaut that is MS launch another unforgiving assault on their competitors, as representatives such as Don ‘Hat-trick’ Mattrick and ‘That Kinect Douche’ Kudo whatshisface promise to ‘redefine’ any of the following; Living Room Entertainment, Console Gaming, Kitchenware, Robotic Engineering or the use of the Hadron Collider. Amongst anticipated announcements are the releases of the new Xbox Console, currently under the pseudonym of ‘Operation Money Print’ a new Star Wars game which will be just as disappointing as ‘The Force Unleashed’ and a debut trailer for Halo 5 & 6.
The Extreme Series: DLC – With Tak Fuji
June 6th / 2PM / Show floor
Well known Konami producer Tak Fuji attempts to address some of the stigma surrounding downloadable content in this personal briefing. Fuji will attempt to answer questions such as “Why do developers hold back content from release?” and “Why are we charged for content already on the disc?” whilst fervently shouting ‘Extreme’ at random intervals.
Nintendo Keynote
June 6th / 4PM / Stage A
This year, as the Nintendo hype train hits top gear, there’s more information on the Wii U (aka the SEGA Game Gear), the aforementioned Sonic game and a new Super Smash Brothers game. As well as this, the Wii and DSi will be released in two different colours (Magenta and Pale Magenta) and the announcement of the debut game featuring the newest Nintendo character ‘Non-specific Action Figure’.
GAME REVEAL! – Call of Duty: The Undeadening
June 6th / 6PM / Stage B
With Black Ops 2 barely even out of the starting gate, the conglomerate of Sledgehammer Games & Infinity Ward announces their next title in CoD: The Undeadening. You take the reins as Bruce Killhard during a siege from the un-dead on the presidential offices in Washington. Featuring cameos from the likes of Captain Price, Gaz (as a Zombie) and General Shepherd (as Zombie boss Thrax Maulforth) you need to escape the city, save the president from the clutches of the zombie horde and nuke the country to quell the threat. Thrilling, no?
LIVE Court Proceedings: West & Zampella vs Infinity Ward
June 7th / 2PM / Stage A
The men who gave Call of Duty multiplayer its formula for success vie for justice as they rally against their former employers. Featuring Robert Bowling as special guest referee, this case will be contested under ‘No Holds Barred’ rules, with the winning team being awarded a copy of the Modern Warfare 3 Hardened Edition and the lifetime rights to the non-fiction autobiography of Captain Price.
Show Floor Giveaway
June 7th / 4PM / Show floor
Did somebody say flimsy plastic cases for an original Xbox 360? No? Oh, well, these, are amongst other things like copies of Cabela’s Safari, FIFA 09 and GRID which are being given away for free, providing you wait in a 3-hour line and pass a very thorough screening process. Just a heads up, if you ever jumped over the wall on ‘Crash’ in ‘Call of Duty 4’ you are exempt from giveaway proceedings.
Show floor wrap-up
June 7th / 6PM / Show floor
Finish the event by sampling some new games and tech for the final time, before standing in an hour-long queue for the bathroom, returning to your hotel, and lauding your experience over your Twitter followers and blogging circle. You will feel privileged for mingling with the industry buffs which you admire and fulfilled by receiving a first-hand look at some of the things that will make the 11 month wait until the next E3 a special time for gaming. On your way out of the convention centre, you will ask, with no remorse, when tickets go on sale for next year’s event. You will be promptly told to “fuck off”.
June 4, 2012
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